What’s the Deal With Donald Trump?
Is he a buffoon? A genius? An exploration of the man, his brand, and his chronic bluster.
WILLIAM D. COHANMAR 20 2013, 9:50 PM ET
Back in April 2011, a month before Donald Trump abandoned his latest flirtation with a presidential run, he appeared on ABC’s This Week. Host George Stephanopoulos had solicited questions from viewers via Twitter, and one of them, from Michael Swaile of Toledo, Ohio, pissed Trump off.
“How would you defend any fiscal policy, considering you’ve had to declare bankruptcy numerous times?,” Swaile wondered.
“I never went bankrupt,” Trump replied.
Before Stephanopoulos could clarify that perhaps Swaile was referring to the Chapter 11 filings of three highly leveraged hotel and casino properties that Trump had a stake in—separately in 1991 and 1992, and then, after restructuring, as a group in 2004 and again in 2009—Trump spoke over him. “Excuse me,” he said. “I never went bankrupt. And let me just tell you: If you look at our great businesspeople today”—he mentioned the leveraged-buyout kings and investors Carl Icahn, Henry Kravis, and Leon Black, and said he could name 25 others—“all of them have done the same. They use, and we use, the laws of this country, the bankruptcy laws, because we’ll buy a company. We’ll have the company, we’ll throw it into a chapter, we’ll negotiate with the banks, we’ll make a fantastic deal. We’ll use those [laws]. But [the bankruptcy filings] were never personal. This is nothing personal. You know, it’s like on The Apprentice. It’s not personal. It’s just business. Okay?”
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